Getting Amazon Vouchers For "Free" - A Review of FeaturePoints, MySurvey, and SwagBucks

18:43
Kelly Wheelhouse
1 Comments

Over the past couple of years I have been using a few different websites and apps that allow you to perform tasks (mostly filling out surveys) in exchange for points which can be spent on Amazon Vouchers, PayPal Payments, and even things like pots and pans for your kitchen. Today I am going to be reviewing 3 of these. FeaturePoints, MySurvey, and SwagBucks.

FeaturePoints
FeaturePoints is the one of the 3 which is mobile only. You download their app, and it will give you a list of apps to download for points. All the apps you have to download are completely free, and the only catch is that you have to use the app for 3 minutes straight. Once you have done this you are free to delete it after checking it has credited your points. I have been using this on iOS devices and have had it for over a year now. Overall I have raked in a fair number of Amazon vouchers- although they do offer other rewards like iTunes gift cards, Starbucks gift cards, paid apps, PayPal funds, Xbox credits, and even Steam wallet funds.
A £1 Amazon gift card costs 1050 points, and the apps you download are worth anything from 10 points to 200+ points. Although in reality a majority of apps are worth about 40 points.
As well as earning points from your own downloads, you can also grab yourself extra points by sharing your unique code. With your account you get a referral code and if someone else uses this code when they sign up they will receive 50 points, and you will get bonus points for every app they download. My code is PPASBZ if you would like to bag yourself 50 points for signing up.
The Amazon gift cards are instant with FeaturePoints. As soon as you have enough points and click to redeem, the code for your gift card is generated there and then so you can enter it straight into Amazon.
It all sounds fantastic, right? Well there are a couple of bugs with FeaturePoints. The main one being that for some of the apps you download, the points don't count. I have had this with many apps, and it is worse when your device starts getting out of date e.g. it's worse at counting the points on the iPhone 4s than it is on iPhone 6.
The other issue I have had with FeaturePoints is that their PayPal payments are only made in dollars, and it took over 60 days to clear as pounds into my PayPal account. I'm not sure if this is FeaturePoints fault or PayPals, so I can't point the finger on this one.
Overall it's a pretty decent app though, and it only takes 3 minutes per app to (hopefully) count the points. The rewards can be quick, depending on what you want. I would say this app works out best if you want to collect the points for Amazon vouchers.
My final rating for FeaturePoints is

MySurvey is a website where you answer surveys in exchange for points which can be redeemed for just about anything. Amazon Vouchers, footballs, even giant outdoor snakes and ladders. This website honestly has the best range of rewards I have ever seen. When you first sign up you will be offered a range of surveys which don't earn you any points. These are your lifestyle surveys which will help determine what surveys will be best for you. It is supposed to help you get surveys that you will qualify for (e.g there is no point it sending you surveys about driving if you don't drive). The problem is, the lifestyle surveys don't seem to have worked. I had questions about cars and driving in my lifestyle surveys and I answered that I have no car and don't drive, and one of the surveys I received to fill out was asking me questions about driving.

With MySurvey it costs 550 points for a £5 Amazon voucher, and each survey can be worth 20 to 200+ points, but most of the surveys are worth 50 points each. Each survey takes a different amount of time to complete, and the amount of points usually reflects the amount of time it takes e.g. a 50 point survey will take 15 minutes, a 70 point survey will take 20 minutes and a 150 point survey will take 50 minutes.

When I first joined MySurvey it was fantastic. I was getting about 4 surveys every time I logged in, and once I completed one another would come in it's place. My partner and I earned £40 over 2 accounts in 2 weeks. It really did seem like the perfect money earning website. Well, it was perfect, up until the last 2 weeks. For some reason neither of our accounts have been having any surveys (apart from one that arrived in Daniel's survey box after he complained to them about having no surveys). One of our friends signed up to it 2 weeks ago, and their account hasn't had a single survey since they filled out their lifestyle questions. I'm not sure why this has happened, but it seems a little odd to have gone from so many surveys a day to none in 2 weeks. I'm very happy that I earned so much from it, but they seriously need to sort out the fact that people aren't getting any surveys anymore.

The Amazon vouchers take much longer to get to you than the FeaturePoints ones. They take 3-5 business days to email the code into your inbox, and if you receive lots of mail like I do, then it can easily get lost in the mass of emails.

If MySurvey was still working the way it was when I first signed up, it would have gotten a full 5 stars from me, because it was fantastic, but now I'm not getting any surveys I will have to give it...

I must admit, I personally don't get on very well with SwagBucks. I've had this for over 2 years and haven't even managed to get my first £5 Amazon voucher yet. The reason for this is because every time I go to use it, I get so frustrated that I don't bother with it. This is because I have filled out all my lifestyle surveys correctly, and it sends me surveys it believes will be suitable for me, and many of these surveys tell me I'm not eligible after asking me simple questions such as my age, gender, and what region I live in. After a long stint of not using SwagBucks I had an email saying I'd earned enough points for a £5 Amazon Voucher, so I looked and I had 300 points and an Amazon voucher was 250 points, so I went to get one. It said I had to verify my address with a code which will be sent to me by mail before I can get my voucher. The code took a month to arrive, and once it did the price of an Amazon voucher had gone up to 849 points. I've been using it for a while since then and have gotten myself up to 780 points, so I will keep up with it until I get my first Amazon voucher, then I'm done with it.

It offers you "gold surveys" which are surveys specifically picked for you- these are okay, about 40% of them will give you the points for being eligible, the rest will tell you their quota is full or you are not eligible for their survey.

Then you have Partner surveys, which I have only been eligible for about 10% of these, and finally "peanut lab" surveys, which I have been eligible for 0% of.

The range of rewards on SwagBucks is not as good as the range offered from MySurvey, but at least you can earn some points from SwagBucks. It does take longer to earn anything on SwagBucks than MySurvey, but with MySurvey not offering any surveys at all it seems this is becoming less true.

Overall, SwagBucks isn't brilliant. It takes a long time to complete the surveys as well as a long time to collect enough points to purchase anything.

My overall rating of SwagBucks is

2/5

My final thoughts on these is that they can be great if you have plenty of time on your hands, but they aren't really free. You are paying for them with your time and effort filling out these surveys or trying the apps. If you had a job you would be expected to be paid at least minimum wage of £6.30ish an hour, but when you take a step back you realise that you are being paid £5 for about 3-6 hours of work. When you look at it that way is it really worth it? To some people who have that time, it is worth it. But to others, maybe not. Let me know your thoughts.